Vegan Hiking footwear
On the first day of Spring, a group of us hiked the Montara Mountain North Peak, an 8 mile round-trip hike with approximately 1800′ elevation gain, and then relaxed at Montara State Beach afterwards. Here’s a photo of some of the vegan footware modelled that day.
I’m very happy with my Garmont Kiowa vegan hikers.
Personally, I’m waiting for the next model that comes with solar-powered propulsion packs for those big hills.
After an upsetting experience with the chef/co-owner of a raw restaurant in Pleasant Hill a couple of months ago, raw foods had, figuratively speaking, left a really bitter taste in my mouth. In that post, I linked that experience in Pleasant Hill with another at Cafe Gratitude on 9th Avenue in SF:
I might just give up on raw restaurants all together after this. The last time that I dined at one, Cafe Gratitude in SF, the waiter (who knew I was vegan) felt compelled to tell me that he prefers to dine on animals because he feels closer to them.
I never blogged the entire experience, or contacted the restaurant management about this, I decided I’d quietly vote with my vegan dining dollars and that was the last time I ate at Cafe Gratitude – February, 2006.
Still, the folks at Cafe Gratitude reached out to me with a sincere apology. And even after they learned this was a historical incident at a location that has since closed, they invited us back to re-experience Cafe Gratitude, or Gracias Madre.
We decided to accept their invitation and visited Cafe Gratitude’s Harrison Street location on a cool spring evening. While there are raw foods that many people eat in their daily lives (fresh fruit, garden salads, rice paper spring rolls with veggies, etc), a raw foods restaurant like Cafe Gratitude elevates raw food dining to an entirely new level.
This is what we selected:
The food was uniformly excellent. We particularly loved the simplicity and understated taste of the black beans, and that has inspired us eat more black beans. We’ve been soaking and cooking them fresh for the last several weeks now.
The desserts were outstanding. Most of them have coconut, and I’m not a big coconut lover, but I was very happy with my raw ice cream & chocolate sauce.
The spring rolls made with chard leaves were great, and I especially loved the pesto pizza. In fact, the only food item we ordered that didn’t impress us was one that came as a side on two dishes, the pickled cabbage. Aside from that, we would happily eat this entire meal, again.
For anyone who hasn’t been to Cafe Gratitude, they have primarily raw foods with some cooked items on the menu. The seating at this location is communal, meaning there’s a couple of large tables which may be shared with separate dining parties, and I think there was also a table that seats four. For me, that detracted from the entire experience — I felt crowded being so close to other diners, as I do like boundaries when I’m eating (as in, that’s my half of the pizza, hands-off!).
We were both very impressed with the raw foods at Cafe Gratitude. We came away with a renewed appreciation for raw foods, a desire to return to Cafe Gratitude (pesto pizza and layer cake), and the notion of a San Francisco Vegan Food Trek in the Mission. I’ll leave that topic for another day.